


Grey Areas and Expectations

by pastelrebel



Series: The Bridge Between Us [1]
Category: Rent - Larson
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, First ever fic, Fluffy Ending, Fluffy beginning, I hope you like, during and after film, going to be a trilogy, mark only briefly mentioned, not actually in fic sorry, title from troye sivan song talk me down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 04:57:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5992369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastelrebel/pseuds/pastelrebel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maureen and Joanne have been distant for a while and it's time address their issues. I decided to have them have been together for quite some time and it's not entirely true to the movie; I had to make it original somehow. This was originally a short story for school, but I changed the names, so certain details of the characters' appearances will be different because I didn't want my teacher to realise I had stolen a film plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grey Areas and Expectations

Joanne looked into her lover of a year and seven months’ deep blue-green eyes. They, like her, were tumultuous, never stagnant, and absolutely beautiful. In a pair of eyes, changing on a day-to-day basis was a good thing, but in a partner this was not so much the case. Joanne tried to ignore it because of her love for Maureen, but at times the thoughts would float back up like an ice cube pushed to the bottom of a glass of water. Ignoring the tension left between them was more difficult than ignoring an elephant in a cupboard. She truly did love Maureen, but even someone with this much passion in their heart had a limit to what they could put up with.

“Maur?” Joanne spoke softly as she took her lover’s pale, tender hand; Maureen looked over, seemingly having been lost in a thought before conversation broke the silence between them. “We really need to talk,” Joanne said with a firm, but not unforgiving tone.

The two did talk, but Maureen constantly kept interrupting Joanne with her excuses. It almost couldn’t be called a conversation, but rather it was something more akin to a power struggle. Maureen kept attempting to justify her behavior, but Joanne wouldn’t have it this time. She was tired of Maureen being flimsy and flirty and irresponsible. It hurt her too much. If Maureen wanted to be with someone like Joanne, it was important that she commit herself just as much as Joanne did to the relationship. She couldn’t take another one-sided love. Was it fair that Joanne was angry? Maybe it was justified, maybe it wasn’t, but ‘fair’ or not, her feelings were certain.

“You want commitment, Jo? I’ve given you commitment. Every day that I’ve stayed with you has been a commitment! Do you know how difficult it is for someone like me to be with someone like you?” Maureen practically shouted in the busy New York City street.

“If you don’t want to be with me, just think what it might be like to be me. To give you every bit of my love and my life, but it still not be enough for you! Maureen, I love you, but this isn’t what I need. This isn’t the life I want to live. I want to have a family and a career and a home. Maur, I want to live the lesbian American dream,” Joanne began with the same hot rage, burning blue within her, the same fire as Maureen, but it faded to the kind of deep sadness someone weaker and more tender than Joanne would have drowned in.

Maureen bit the inside of her cheek and crossed her arms. Joanne walked a bit ahead of her with her fists held tightly by her sides and her jaw clenched. The two didn’t speak of it again for a long time. For three long and stressful weeks, they slept apart with Joanne in the bedroom and Maureen on the couch, always gone by the morning. Silently and gradually, their relationship returned to its usual pattern. It wasn’t the same, though. If Joanne felt that their relationship had been lacking before, that had been nothing compared to the outcome of confronting it. Joanne and Maureen seemed to date only out of  habit now, rather than the deep and passionate love they had once shared with one another. Or at the very least that Joanne had had, maybe still had, for Maureen.  _ Please don't let this turn out like Marie,  _ the back of ]Joanne’s mind had whispered to her non-stop each night as she tried to fall asleep.

Months passed like this. Empty, haunting, and loveless months. All Joanne wanted to do was return to what she had had before she had ruined it all. Their two year anniversary was in three days, but neither of them outwardly seemed excited. In three days, they would be wed. 

Joanne asked herself if they were eloping because they wanted to show the world how strongly they felt, or simply because it was the natural next step in their affectionless relationship. Would they adopt children and raise them in a loveless home? Or would they split their separate ways, Maureen to perform for and inspire the world and Joanne to be a lonely, successful lawyer? Or maybe, just maybe, Joanne thought, these two women could work it out, fix things and form a happy, loving family in which the parents had a healthy relationship with one another and their children. 

Joanne tried to step outside of herself and her feelings; she tried to think about her relationship as if it were someone else’s and not hers. Still, it didn’t work. If anything, rather than finding the logical solution, more questions had arisen and she was more confused than she had been before. She convinced herself that, for the moment, these thoughts didn’t matter.

Maureen walked into the lounge, pulling her large, pink suitcase behind her by its handle, “Jo, we don’t want to miss our flight!” she nearly squealed. This wasn’t a shrill angry shout, but rather a classic, Maureenesque overexpression of emotions. A dramatisation from a theatre major. Her cherry red lips formed a bright smile and Joanne fell for her all over again.

“We’ll be fine, dear. I’m ready to go,” Joanne spoke reassuringly as she felt the corners of her mouth lifting up into a more natural smile than she had given anyone, let alone Maureen, in months. She grabbed her bag and walked to the door of their large, shared loft.

On the plane, Joanne felt a strange relief.  _ Maybe this was what we had needed all along to make it better.  _ Even then, she had known it was all a lie, but she wanted so desperately to believe it that she convinced herself she did.

When the plane arrived at the Dover, MA airport several hours later, the luster of the trip had yet to wear off. Maureen glowed, but then again she always did with her radiant confidence. Even Joanne felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

Waking up in the bed she had slept in as a child felt strange yet refreshing, as if she were getting a break from adulthood and all its obligations and complexities. Joanne looked about the frilly, pale yellow room and climbed from the bed, bare dark feet on light hardwood. As she walked over to the white vanity and sat down in front of it, nostalgia and memories filled her mind. She found herself startled when her mother cracked the door open and tenderly whispered, “Joanne, honey, I know you’re nervous about the big day, but that’s no reason to miss breakfast. Lisa made those croissants that you like; they shouldn’t be too hard on your stomach.”

Joanne stood without a word and went to the breakfast table. She knew she couldn’t tell even the woman who gave birth to her about this problem. She created it for herself and there was no one else to blame. Joanne didn’t want to ruin the ignorant bliss Mrs. Jefferson experienced. That would have been unfair.  _ It’s okay; I’m okay. I can do this. We can do this.  _ Her eyes searched Maureen’s across the table and it was there, in front of both of their parents, that she found the truth: no, she couldn't do this.  _ It doesn’t matter; I have to. Even when I can’t.  _ Joanne knew she had to hide from herself and her feelings to do this for her parents who had poured so much into their love.

Breakfast was a war between Joanne and herself. A battle to stay at the table and a battle not to cry. Yet a third battle took place -- this battle a battle to get her food down her throat though tears threatened to spill from her eyes. Somehow, she won, but when she went up to her old room to get ready, loud sobs erupted from inside her she threw herself onto the same bed she used to throw tantrums on when her violin lessons weren’t going well or she wasn’t skilled enough at ballroom dance. She would have traded problems with her younger self in a heartbeat.

Some time later, when Joanne was finally all cried out, she went to the bathroom. Her skin was flushed and looked blotchy and irritated. Joanne’s black curls were frizzy and bumpy, utterly messy. Even her intense, almond shaped honey-hazelnut eyes were red and her sinus area was puffy; Joanne couldn’t seem to stop sniffling. In the days of violin lessons and dance classes, she never would have imagined her life or her wedding dress.  _ What did I do to earn this life? I have been living by the book for twenty seven years, nose to the grindstone, working hard without being mean, so why am I crying in front of a mirror and not walking down the aisle with a beautiful woman in white who I love with all of my heart? How did I fall for a girl like my Maureen? Why did I ever think this would work? I wasn’t raised to be a fool. _

Joanne washed her face and ran a bit of hair tonic through her messy hair to smooth it. Light blush and a neutral lipstick for softness and contrast. Full mascara and carefully applied eyeliner. With only that, all traces of her tears were gone. She forced a smile and looked in the mirror. No one would ever have thought she could have been crying a mere fifteen minutes ago.

Joanne stood at the end of the aisle. Her smile had vanished. In its place, there lie a tense jaw and bared teeth.  _ No. I won’t start a fight. Not here at the reception. I’m not that tactless.  _

Maureen, however, had no qualms.

“Do you take this woman to be your lovely wedded wife?” the pastor asked with a smile.

“No!” Maureen had shouted, “I can’t do this! Joanne, you just want to control me! To tie me down! How can I fly with you sticking nails in my wings to hang me to your wall?” Maureen’s face was red and shiny; tears ran down her heavily powdered face, carrying black lines from eye makeup with them. She was more of a mess than Joanne had ever seen her before in the two years they had been together. 

“I’m an artist! I want my freedom! Just because I kiss someone else doesn’t mean I don’t love you and it doesn’t mean I’m going to up and leave! When Mark and I split, it was because I wanted to be with you! It was because he didn’t understand my ability to love more than one person… I thought you would get it, but you’re just the same as Mark! If you can’t take me for what I am, then you don’t deserve to have me at all!”

“Maureen, I’m a logical person- I'm not like you! I want to settle down with someone and adopt two sweet children. I want my wife and I to raise them just outside the city, and you know what? I thought you would be that wife, but I was so, so wrong. I need commitment that you can’t give me and, if you can’t commit to me, you should make it easier and leave me now! This hurts more than you leaving me ever could!”

Joanne ran up the stairs, as did Maureen. Joanne slammed the door to her childhood room as loudly as she could and crawled into bed with the hope that she could hide from the world. She cried no more; already, Joanne had cried too many tears for one day. In sleep, she found momentary salvation. Joanne slept from late afternoon to the early hours of the morning. At maybe two, she awoke and peeled off her wedding dress, but crawled right back into bed. She cried a little more, enough to cry herself back to sleep, where she stayed for longer than if she were ill.

Joanne came down the stairs in a long, white robe late the next morning with black pockets from sleeping with mascara on below and around her eyes and sloppy hair. She almost asked if Maureen had stayed, but the sympathetic look her father gave her said it all. Maureen was gone. The heartbreak took her years to get over completely. 

In time, though, Joanne could look back and remember Maureen fondly. She was a memory and an era, the pain she needed to balance out the sheer joy she now had. 

Joanne smiles and looks up from the wheel. A little girl and a littler boy walk out of the schoolhouse and, when they notice Joanne, they run to the car. The children clammer inside and begin babbling about the events of their day. She laughs and listens to what they have to say.

With her recent thoughts, she appreciates her life, her lover, her home and her family all the more, but is still thankful that she has the experiences and hopes they help her in this new, brighter chapter of her life.


End file.
